Bystronic looks forward to new facility opening, FABTECH

Bystronic Inc. President Bob St. Aubin shares a computer-generated rendering of what the new company headquarters will look like when it opens in early 2020 with fabricators in attendance for the Bystronic Sneak Peek event, which showcased equipment to be on display at FABTECH 2019 in Chicago Nov. 11-14.

“This is the last event like this that we’ll have here,” Brody Fanning, Bystronic’s vice president of sales, told a gathering of fabricators at the company’s Sneak Peek event on Sept. 25 at its headquarters in Elgin, Ill.

The event was meant to give fabricators a chance to get a look at what the company will be debuting in North America at FABTECH® 2019 in Chicago’s McCormick Place, Nov. 11-14. However, it also was an opportunity for Bystronic officials to provide a peek at how its new headquarters is shaping up just 7 miles east on Interstate 90. Come the start of 2020, Bystronic will have a much larger building it can grow into as it looks to expand its presence in North and South America.

The new facility will be 165,000 sq. ft., dwarfing the current 48,000-sq.-ft. facility. It will have a 30,000-sq.-ft. showroom, double the size of the Elgin showroom.

Bob St. Aubin, Bystronic Inc. president, announced that the new facility also will be the company’s first manufacturing location in the U.S. The BySmart laser cutting machine, which at one time was made only in China, will be the company’s first “world” product, St. Aubin said. Now the BySmart lasers made in China will be sold to customers in the Asia-Pacific region, and the same lasers made in Europe and the U.S. will be sold to customers in those regions. The new Bystronic facility, which will have 95,000 sq. ft. dedicated to manufacturing, should start producing laser cutting machines by the spring of 2020.

“We’re bringing manufacturing here. We’re bringing jobs here. We’re bringing machinery here,” St. Aubin said. “So in the future if you want the laser cutting machine we’re talking about [BySmart], you’ll know that you’ll be getting one made here in the U.S.”

The new facility also will have a “factory of the future” setup, which will comprise connected machinery and advanced automation, St. Aubin said. Almost 10,000 sq. ft. of office space, on the second floor of the administrative office, will not be immediately occupied once the building opens in anticipation of future growth.

The fabricators in attendance also had the opportunity to see equipment that will be showcased at FABTECH:

• The ByStar 3015 (5 by 10 ft.) and 4020 (6 by 13 ft.) laser cutting machines are now available with 12-kW fiber laser power sources. Brendon DiVincenzo, Bystronic Inc. product manager for lasers and automation, said that this new high-powered laser can cut 25 percent faster than a 10-kW fiber on 3/8-in. stainless steel.
• To keep up with the incredible speed of parts being produced by these high-powered lasers, Bystronic has rolled out its BySort automated parts sorting technology that is available on its ByTrans Cross modular material handling system. It can accommodate parts in the 6- by 6-in. range in thicknesses from 16 gauge to 5/8 in. Each of the two vacuum grippers can pick up a maximum weight of about 110 lbs. BySoft programming software automatically determines the best sorting patterns to speed up the process and how parts are placed on pallets or bins.
• The ByStar Fiber is now available in extra-large formats. The 6225 has an 8- by 20-ft. table, and the 8025 has an 8- by 26-ft. table. This allows fabricators to process smaller sheets consecutively without interruption.
• The Xpress 50 (55 U.S. tons) and Xpress 160 (176 tons) are entry-level press brakes that are designed to give new users some of the features found on more complex press brakes for an affordable price, said Paul LeTang, Bystronic product manager for press brakes. For example, the brakes have a simplified touchscreen interface so that inexperienced operators can program a part quickly. Also, the brake comes with European-style manual tool clamping; CNC wedge-style crowning (on the larger Xpress brake only); 4-axis backgauge; and laser guarding at the point of operations.
• The Xpert Pro press brake has a new level of artificial intelligence to assist in the production of quality bends. For example, load sensors in the hydraulic circuit can pick up in real time when the ram is encountering a hard spot in the metal blank, and the press brake can adjust accordingly, such as by tilting the ram a bit, to ensure the correct bend angle is achieved. As part of this advanced programming, the press brake’s control software amasses corrections such as this and adds it to its database as it “learns” from these different applications, according to LeTang.

This equipment will be showcased in Booth A2122 at FABTECH.